Various types of movable barrier operators have been used to move different types of barriers throughout the years. For example, garage door operators have been used to move garage doors and gate operators have been used to move gates.
Whatever their type, movable barrier operators typically control access to a secured area, for instance, a garage. In the case of the secured space being a garage, a vehicle may be parked in the garage. However, other activities are frequently conducted by the owner of the garage (or others that are permitted access to the garage) in addition to parking a vehicle.
For instance, a workshop or similar arrangement may be situated in the garage and an individual may spend substantial amounts of time in this workshop. The user may also be present in the garage for other reasons and/or for shorter time periods (e.g., to clean the garage, take out garbage, or service a vehicle to name a few examples). While engaging in these activities in the garage, the user may desire to listen to music or watch television.
The garage may be located remotely from the front door of a residence and the user may be unable to hear the doorbell or chimes associated with the front door of the residence when these devices have been actuated. In all of the above-mentioned situations, audio amplifier devices may be used to render desired audio information to the user in the garage or other secured area.
The operation of the audio amplifier device requires obtaining power from a power supply. By some previous approaches, the user typically connected the movable barrier operator and the audio amplifier to the same transformer-based power supply. Unfortunately, due to the concurrent requirement of at least occasional high power levels for both the audio amplifier and the movable barrier operator, problems have occurred in these previous systems when simultaneous operation of these devices was attempted.
For example, in some previous systems when the movable barrier operator was running, a loud passage was simultaneously rendered by the audio amplifier. The rendering of the loud passage drew a substantial amount of power from the power supply, at least temporarily reducing power delivered to the operator, and thereby causing a force-based reversal of the operator (or otherwise negatively impacting operator performance). Previous systems attempted to overcome this problem by increasing the size of the transformer and thereby providing enough power for the simultaneous operation of both the movable barrier operator and the audio amplifier. However, increasing the size of the transformer also increased the cost of the system. In addition, the resultant increased size and weight of the power supply led to problems in fitting the power supplies into areas where space was at a premium or where weight was a concern.